The new project the studio was working on is now cancelled

Sony’s California Santa Monica Studio, the developer behind the God of War franchise, was hit with layoffs today. Although the exact number people let go is still unknown, it’s rumoured to be approximately 50 individuals.

Sony released the following statement about the layoffs:

“SCEA can confirm that we have completed a reduction in workforce at Santa Monica Studio. This is a result of a cycle of resource re-alignment against priority growth areas within SCE WWS. We do not take these decisions lightly. However, sometimes it is necessary to make changes to better serve the future projects of the studio. We have offered outplacement services and severance packages to ease transition for those impacted.”

Sony Santa Monica is an internal first-party Sony studio. The company also has other studios: SCE Japan, SCE London as well as The Last of Us’ developer, Naughty Dog and LittleBigPlanet’s developer, Media Molecule.

Sony Santa Monica was founded in 1999 and the last game the studio completed was God of War: Ascension but they also created almost every title in the franchise (other than the PlayStation Portable spin-offs). While Ascension received decent reviews, it reportedly didn’t sell as well as Sony had hoped.

Very little is known about what the studio was working on before the layoffs.

IGN notes in their story that Sony Santa Monica recently moved offices and posted job openings. In a PlayStation Blog post from January, the studio’s director, Shannon Studstill, said the studio will, “move into a new cutting-edge facility that will meet the needs of our growing team for the next era of Santa Monica Studio.” Also, in August of last year God of War co-creator, Cory Barlog, announced he was returning to the studio to work on something big.

Employees at the development studio turned to twitter to express their obvious disappointment. It seems whatever game the studio was working on is now cancelled.

@MataHaggis not voluntary chap, project cancellation = position deletion. Game Over Man!

It’s rumoured the new game Sony Santa Monica was working on was “unique” and very “sci-fi.” Popular neoGAF tipsterShinobi602 posted what he knew about the game.

“Sad to hear Santa Monica’s new IP is canned. It sounded pretty darn good from what I was told. RIP, we hardly knew ye. New IP was really unique, sci-fi…legitimately saddened at the news. Sorry to everyone involved, damn. What’s worse is that it was set to be unveiled at E3. Something massive must have happened. : (“

It’s always sad when layoffs hit any developer, especially a studio with a reputation like Sony Santa Monica. I guess we’ll probably never know what their now cancelled new game was going to be.